I like the pace of technology, both in finance and in health care, which I occasionally stray into. I have written for Securities Industry News, Risk, Institutional Investor and Alpha. For ten years I edited Windows in Financial Services, covering Microsoft technology in finance, and I continue to write for Banking Technology and Trading Places, both in London.

New Teradata Platform Reduces Demand For Data Scientists

Haul out those data scientist demand projections for a refresh — just as several tech consultants had predicted a year ago, new technology looks ready to simplify a lot of the analytics so a business analyst, maybe even a mere business person, can handle them. Estimates of the data scientist shortage had ranged from 150,000 to 1.5 million, depending on the geography and the definition of data scientist or data analyst.

You can cut that by 80 percent with new tools, said Steve Wooledge, Teradata Aster spokesperson, in discussing the Teradata Aster Discovery Platform 5.10.

“This helps close the skills gap in the market,” he explained. “A lot of people are talking about data scientists. I think it is our duty as a vendor to be able to provide these technologies in a highly integrated way with SQL and BI (business intelligence) tools. If you can get a single data scientist to build one of these functions, then with a SQL wrapper you can expose it to business analysts. The result is you need to hire just one data scientist rather than five. It willhelp companies innovate more quickly by accelerating the analytics.”

Release 5.10 brings in new analytic techniques and visualization components aimed at helping business analysts to help them explore lots of different data much more quickly, Wooledge added. “The discover platform notion is something we are pushing, it is aimed to accelerate analytic operations, to help analysts find new and existing types of data in large data sets.”

The company said the 5.10 version will be a comprehensive discovery solution with more than 20 new big data analytic capabilities, including out-of-the-box-ready visual capabilities. (Also see my upcoming Tableau story for more on visualization) Insights from these analytics can empower organizations to be more profitable by improving detection of customer churn, fraud, and the root causes of low-yield in manufacturing processes.

With it, users can acquire and analyze petabyte-sized volumes of multi-structured data in a single platform with a single SQL command.

The Teradata Aster Discovery Platform is easy to use by any SQL-savvy analyst or business user, as well as powerful and flexible enough for the most sophisticated data scientists, Teradata said in its announcement.

“With newly added analytics and visualization functionality, the Teradata Aster Discovery Platform offers the convenience of a ‘data scientist in a box.’” said Dan Vesset, program vice president of business analytics and big data, IDC.

How many data scientists does the world need?

Just yesterday, Cliff Cate, senior vice president for customer success at GoodData, posted a note on his blog expressing similar conclusions about data scientists, opinions he said were unpopular at The Global Big Data Conference.

“I said that the hype that has been building around the data scientist is over. Judging by the reaction, you’d think I’d have said that Abraham Lincoln is alive and living in Ohio.”

GoodData is a cloud-based big data analytics company.

He attended a panel “The Next Big Thing for Data” which featured one data scientist, three database infrastructure experts, a senior infrastructure architect and Cate, the only member who actually dealt with customers, he recalled.

“The tech guys were mainly focused on infrastructure issues, like speed, scalability and latency. I’m close to customers who are actually using the technology. It’s my job to be aware of how customers use big data to gain business value.

He made three key points:

– Companies need to provide solutions that a business user can understand.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.